“Why risk human life when machines can gather the information needed to make those decisions.”.
Because humans are infinitely better than machines can ever be in noticing tiny little possibly critically important things. Humans can make decisions in the here and now. Humans will be able to adapt and build a city, and create new ideas and things that a robot or two never can.
There is no shortage of volunteers for such an endeavor, and most of them would gladly pay for the opportunity, though hopefully a rational approach to deciding who goes, by who can potentially contribute the most from their personal skill sets, ambitions, and willingness to learn and innate adaptability. Which is why it must be private and not government sponsored as they will do their accounting based on fairness and melanin content, thus will mars be colonized by muslims, and ultimately fail. But, there is an endless supply of volunteers, let them explore, humanity needs to explore, otherwise they get fat, lazy, and eventally turn into democrats
I think really taking off into space will take both private and public cooperation. NASA is supposed to be a pathfinding and prospecting agency and they need to get back to that Lewis and Clark mission.
The big problem with the public part is the politics of it. I know that there are scientists at NASA who would rather send a robotic mission to one of the martian moons before this asteroid capture mission but the politics are with capture at this point. On the other hand I think there will be lots of private money going toward the capture mission.
“Because humans are infinitely better than machines can ever be in noticing tiny little possibly critically important things. Humans can make decisions in the here and now. Humans will be able to adapt and build a city, and create new ideas and things that a robot or two never can.”
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I do not disagree with you, particularly in the here and now. But if time continues, robotics will improve and technology will advance so that machines will survive in environments that humans never will. We can gain a great deal of new knowledge in this manner, if we want to. And with controllable risk and expendable resources. All I am saying is robotics is a first step. Tools for us to use to explore space if we don’t wish venture out of our earthly environment yet.